Google's vision of a universal library archiving all books ever published on Earth is once again at odds with laws protecting the authors of those books. A federal judge on Tuesday rejected a settlement deal Google hammered out with publishers over its controversial Google Books archive, saying the proposed agreement went too far in giving Google control over the digitalization of books.

The LiMo Foundation says it has approved four mobile device class specifications for the LiMo 4 mobile Linux stack. Citing first-time tablet support plus three different smartphone specs, the Foundation projects commercial releases within multiple LiMo classes starting in the second half of this year.

The ever-inventive openSUSE gang have come up with another cool service to enhance user experience and promote good will. This time it is a little less technical and a little more social. Connect with other openSUSE users, developers, and groups. You can make friends, find out the latest news, and get involved.

What is the role, purpose and point of software? Most people might assume that question to have an obvious answer: as the Berkman Center for Internet & Society puts it, software is “the programs or other ‘instructions’ that a computer needs to perform specific tasks. Examples of software include word processors, e-mail clients, web browsers, video games, spread sheets, accounting tools and operating systems.” What this description omits of course is human agency, which ultimately determines what software does, how it does it, the degree to which it supports or undermines the rules and laws of society, and how it encourages or discourages ordinary citizens to participate in the process of defining those rules and laws.

This morning brings news of what may become another new and important consortium – the Open Network Foundation (ONF). This time the goal is to adapt network architecture to streamline its interoperation with cloud computing. And while the news is intriguing, the way in which it has been broken is a bit odd, on which more below.

Firefox 4 is finally released today by Mozilla that brings a feature packed, fast, minimal and a secure next generation web browser to the world. The browser has already been downloaded more than 2 million times within just 4 hours from the release.

The claims that Android has intellectual property worries from Linux and its Gnu General Public License, version 2 (GPLv2) are rather absurd. After all, Android is a smartphone/tablet optimized Linux. Android may have real legal worries from Microsoft and Oracle, but from Linux? I think not. And, now Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux, has declared that these claims are so much junk.

Quick, across the entire history of Amazon, and all the types of products that the site has sold, what is its top selling product ever? The answer is that the Kindle eBook reader is, and that feat was attained while the Kindle functioned as a reading device, without the bells and whistles found on popular tablet devices. No Harry Potter book or other product comes close to the sales Amazon has reaped from the Kindle, and those sales have, of course, driven sales of lots of content from Amazon. For these reasons, and because of the increasing unpopularity of Apple's policies regarding in-app purchasing, the Kindle could emerge as the biggest competitor to Apple's iPad, if Amazon plays its cards right.

The much anticipated Firefox 4 was officially released earlier today. This is *the* fastest Firefox ever to be released and is also the best in terms of looks and functionality as well. When the new super fast JaegerMonkey javascript engine made web browsing so much faster, innovative additions like Tab Candy(now called Panorama) is definitely going to help end user with better tab management capabilities. Not even a day has passed since the official launch of Firefox 4 and look at the download statistics. At the time of writing this article, Firefox 4 has already been downloaded for more than 2.0 million times!!

The devastation in Japan is heart rending and compels each of one of us to contribute to help improve the situation. Similar thoughts have been running through developers at Freaklabs . At the hackerspace they are involved with, a solar rechargeable lantern was designed for garden and patio use. Called the Kimono Lantern, today they are able to put it to better use.

The following tutorial will extend the "Perfect Server.... " for ISPConfig 3 with BIND & Courier installed on Debian Squeeze. It explains how to change default ports (ssh, ispconfig, webmin), how to install some useful applications (webmin, roundcube, atop, htop, multitail, tiger etc), how to update awstats periodically (more than once a day) or whenever you want, how to create clients' data backups (periodically) accessible under their folder and finally it explains how to tweak your system for performance (mysqltuner, tuning-primer) or security (custom firewall rules, (D)Dos Deflate, fail2ban modified).

openSUSE 11.4 is out and comes with KDE 4.6 or GNOME 2.30 (though other DEs are available). I tested it using a live USB on my laptop. Despite the troubles Novell seems to be having right now, openSUSE 11.4 looks to be the best release yet.

Announced today by the Document fundation the release of LibreOffice3.3.2, this is an update release that comes to improve the stability of the software and sets the platform for the next release 3.4, due in mid May.

If you can’t beat them, sue them. It’s pretty clear that Microsoft, a many-time failure at mass-market tablets has decided that if they can’t beat Apple and Android at popular tablets, they’ll sue them instead. That’s my only explanation for Microsoft suing Barnes & Noble, Foxconn, and Inventec over their Android e-readers.

Audacity, the popular cross-platform software audio recorder and editor, is easy-to-learn yet very capable. To get started, I'll show you how you can create your own CD in Audacity on Linux. From simple recording all the way to mastering the CD, you'll learn the basics of doing audio production in Audacity.